Plagiarism

What I found most beneficial about the two articles on plagiarism was the fact that the two articles offered both sides of the issue. Plagiarism is something that is drilled into our minds at a very young age as being something bad that we are to avoid at all costs. If I recall correctly, when I learned about plagiarism in middle school, and even a little high school, we not only were told that plagiarism is stealing someone else's work and is bad, but we also learned that plagiarism can be unintentional. We were taught to always double check our work, make sure it's original, make sure that not even one sentence or phrase could be considered plagiarism. To this day, I still make a very conscious effort to make sure that nothing in any of my writing, that isn't attributed, could be seen as plagiarism.

This is why the whole situation is very confusing to me. I completely understand that sometimes we can all get "careless", which can, unfortunately lead to accusations of plagiarism sometimes. However, I would expect someone, like the journalist John Merrill, who has a significant amount of journalistic experience to know to attribute quotes from whatever source he got them from. This is what struck me as being most odd when I read these articles.

My initial reaction was that both sides made valid arguments, and that Merrill made a mistake and that the punishment also may have been a little harsh. However, after reading the article by Merrill I started to think a lot about it. It is true that this incident could possibly ruin his reputation as a journalist. However, he also kept saying that he had been accused of plagiarism. While, yes, this is the implication, as was mentioned in the first article, the actual term, "plagiarism" was never even used. However, if you have been doing this for as long as he had been, then it should probably be second nature to try not to be "careless" about something as simple as citing a source.

Oprah + Obama?

So I wrote awhile earlier about Oprah's support of Barack Obama. Now, Oprah is endorsing Obama's campaign, but she is also going to hit the campaign trail with him. I guess the big question about this is, what kind of effect will Oprah's support have on voters? It's still strange to me to think that a talk show personality is making such a huge impact in politics right now.

I think that to say, Oprah could help Obama win the election is jumping the gun just a bit. However, a lot of people think that the person with the most to worry about in this situation is Hillary Clinton. I do recognize the fact that Oprah could very well help Obama gain some votes that would otherwise go to Clinton. A lot of Clinton's support has come from women voters. However, this is the same demographic of Oprah's viewers. It's very possible that she could sway their votes from Clinton to Obama.

Poynter Reading

I found the reading for this week to be really interesting. It was all about online journalism, the type of project we are about to be working on ourselves, and the creation of Soundslides. For me, personally, I think that the concept of audio slideshows as a form of journalism is extremely interesting. I actually really like the idea. I think that a story can have a greater impact when told by both words and images.

I feel like this technique could very well be the future of journalism. The internet allows quite a bit of flexibility, and slideshows provide a way to present stories in a broader way which incorporates all different types of journalism.

I also really enjoyed reading the interview with Joe Weiss. I understand that the point of the interview was to find out more about his development of Soundslides, but I think that what I got much more out of were his comments about journalism, in general. I found that I could relate to a lot of the things that he had to say. Like, for example, what drew him to journalism in the first place and about how he liked the idea of connecting people to other people. I feel like this is an aspect of journalism that can get forgotten about so quickly, that it was just refreshing to see that people do still believe that. I also like the fact that he developed Soundslides for the sole purpose of helping out fellow journalists.

Also, I won't lie, I was quite drawn to the fact that Weiss was a photojournalist. I liked reading about someone who is doing exactly what I want to be doing. I actually gained a lot of insight into photojournalism as a result of the reading. I especially enjoyed what Weiss had to say about the hope that reporters and photojournalists could eventually work together to create slideshow stories. As much as I think that an image can often speak very well by itself, I also feel that the ability to combine a good print story with a good photo could be an extremely worthwhile talent to have.